I have a new website (& blog)!

Hey everyone! The cat is out of the bag: I (finally) have a new website! And with it, comes a shiny new blog too, where I'll be posting from time to time about my freelancing life and things that caught my eye. I might post some life updates too and share photos of places I've been because I do love sharing these. The thing is, I want my new blog to be a little more professional and in line with my website, and I grew a bit tired of sharing snippets of my life over here purely because I'm already doing it on Instagram via stories! You must have noticed that I've hardly posted on the blog since the beginning of the year anyway ;)

I'm leaving this one live because I really want people to be able to come back to it whenever they feel like it or if there are any blog posts that they want to refer back to. Plus, I've got all these wallpaper giveaways that I want to keep available :)

So if you'd like to see the new website, it's right HERE. And make sure to follow me on Instagram for some day to day updates, behind the scenes and work in progress!

Thanks for everything guys and if you've been following me since the beginning of this blog, then you're truly a rock star!

Tweet

Portfolio Update - Choulala Box

Hey guys! I'm jumping back on the good old blog to share with you my latest portfolio update! I hope you've all been well and you're enjoying the beginning of Summer like me :). Well, it's still not super warm and sunny but it's nice to have the window open whilst working and not freezing on my chair ;)

This week, Jason has been spending some time with friends and family in North Wales so I've been staying on my own at home. Although I've still been working and didn't take any days off, I decided to concentrate less on client work and to FINALLY get things done on the personal side of my business. SO, I'm pleased to report that my new website's design is done! I prepared the whole layout in Photoshop and created all the little graphical bits that will be used. It actually felt really good to get this done because, guys, I've been planning this since January! Ha. I only need Jason now to take the time to put it all together on Squarespace ;)

Another thing on my to-do list was to take photos of the deck of flashcards I designed for Choulala Box and share the whole project on my current website, which I did (well, it's kinda obvious)! If you'd like to learn more about the whole project and see more photos, head over to my website right here. You can also check out Choulala Box and their amazing products available for purchase :) I'm really pleased with how these turned out and I can't wait to work again with Rola in the near future!

In other news, my birthday is next month and I can't believe I'm going to be 30. 30 years old. It only sounds weird because I really don't feel that age. I think it's because when I was 20, I thought that at 30, people had everything figured out and understood life. Well, I still don't have everything figured out and I still don't understand life (lol). But other than that, I'm actually feeling good about it because even though our life is not perfect and there are ups and downs, I feel that I'm at a pretty good place right now, doing what I love and creating a nice life (at least as much as we can) with my man.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Tweet

The past 3 months!

Hello, it's me! I can't believe I haven't written anything on the blog for almost three months! I think I've been so busy with work and personal life that the blog was the least of my worries haha. To be honest, I feel that people don't really read blog posts anymore and are more eager to have a look on Insta stories instead (ahem, I do this too). BUT, I like to share things with you guys and a blog post is great for doing little résumés of our life in general so I felt it was a good time to let you know what I've been up to since mid-February!

Well first, let me show you the amazing brunch we had at the Café des Orfèvres on the 17th of February! If you remember well, I created the whole brand for them last year and since then, every time we visit Vannes we try to make a stop at the café to eat some delicious treats. This brunch was just so good and it was super nice and sunny in Vannes, which was a bonus!

Life has been good the past three months, although a bit stressful with work but it's all fine in the end! Stress is sometimes part of work life purely because of the type of projects we take on and poor Jason was very very busy at one point with clients that kept coming back to him for more! We feel so lucky, and it's truly amazing to have regular clients coming back to us, but we also need to be careful not to go down the burn-out route and find the right balance. It seems to be a recurrent problem for freelancers!

That said, I was lucky enough to work on some very cool projects (one of them I can't share with you yet but is probably the most important project I've ever worked on in my career!). I collaborated on some more Lord of The Rings and Harry Potter inspired designs for Not Very Lady Like, created a box of inspiring and educational flash cards for Choulala Box (coming very soon!), and helped Innersense Organic Beauty raise awareness for Williams Syndrome Month by creating a hand-drawn lettering that was printed on t-shirts, mugs and make-up bags.

Oh and I've also released two new products on my Creative Market shop! The Magical Forest illustrations seem to be a hit so far ;)

I'm also taking part in the Instagram challenge 'Bon Voyage Week' and so far so good! I'm a bit overwhelmed by the responses I've had so far and it feels great to get so many nice comments on the fun and colourful illustrations I created for this challenge. It does show the importance of doing some personal work alongside client work. Check them out!

On the personal side, the weeks have been flying by to be honest but we've tried to take our time and relax as much as we could whenever possible. We visited my family a couple of times, explored other parts of Bretagne when the weather permitted it and had one or two VERY relaxed weekends, walking by the river, cooking delicious meals and playing Super Mario Odyssey on the Switch ;) Some photos below!

Tasty crêpes and a walk on Guidel Plage:

Perfect day out at the Domaine de Trévarez (jaw-dropping sight):

We also decided to take the day off for Jason's birthday (which landed on a Friday) and visited the Parc de Branféré! I loved walking around that parc and realising that all the animals were not stuck in cages and that a lot of them were completely free to roam around people.

AND, last but not least, I finally got my first tattoos ever!! I created the illustrations based on two of my favourite Miyazaki movies (can you guess which ones?) last Summer and waited a long time before starting to contact some tattoo artists that would be up for it. I was SO scared of the pain and honestly thought that I would be in agony, but overall it wasn't bad at all! Yes, it hurts, but I honestly feel way more pain waxing my bikini line!

I'm so pleased I did it and I'm already planning my other two (it will be a set too)! I'm also planning on taking some better photos than these ones with a better light and setting ;)

Hope you're all doing well and you enjoyed seeing this little recap!

Tweet

Life Lately... 2019 so far!

Well hello guys! No, I'm not dead! I just took a very long break from the blog and let me say this: the past month and a half has gone by in a blur.

This year didn't quite start like I hoped it would. It was a bit slow and painful to be honest! We came back from North Wales at the beginning of January and went back to work on the 7th. I think it didn't help me to think that a week had passed already and I hadn't done anything in particular. I was putting quite a lot of pressure on myself to achieve more with my work at the end of last year (still kinda am) and because of this, I felt even worse about starting work again!

Getting back into the swing of things was a bit hard and I mainly felt like hibernating haha. But then I started to feel a lot more motivated mid-January and all of sudden, loads of ideas for personal projects came. Since then, I've been struggling to find a balance between client work (which really is the most important and pays the bills), my personal projects (which are important too as there are so many things I'd like to do!) and my private life (my poor husband and I are not having a lot of time to relax together lately...).

So I've been fighting against time the past month, trying to do everything whilst keeping a schedule that means I won't end up with burnout! I keep thinking: How do people with kids manage? Honestly though, we're working so much that when we're not working, we'd barely have the time or energy to look after a child.

We love to take some time during the weekend to go for a walk, get some fresh air, discover a new part of Bretagne and eat something nice along the way. These moments just the two of us are always so good and we definitely feel like we need more of this and less of work. But you know what, we love what we do so sometimes it's hard to switch off, and when we do, if I'm still at home, I'll find a way to get my iPad and sketch some ideas. Funny isn't it?! It's very hard to have a good balance, but all that said, I'm the happiest I've ever been for a while and it must be that we're doing something right :)

A few photos below!

From top to bottom: Afternoon shopping and bagels in Lorient / Winter walk in Pont-Augan / Sunny day in Guéméné-sur-Scorff where we visited Les Bains de La Reine and discovered the castle walls / Gloomy Saturday spent well in Domaine de Kerguéhennec

I've been creating more for social media as well, which has been really good for me as I participated in the #kidsincolorz challenge earlier this month and absolutely loved it! I have more ideas about templates and freebies (wallpapers mainly) that I'm planning on sharing on my stories and adding on my highlights as I'm probably not going to do wallpaper giveaways over here now. I'm still working on getting my new website right but I'm still at the stage of sketches and I only just started to create some custom typography for it, so you'll have to wait a little longer to see it!

You might have noticed as well that I've finally opened my Creative Market shop! Something I've been thinking about doing for a very long time. I've realised mid-last year that having a stationery shop on Etsy wasn't really working for me anymore. The main issue being the fact that I couldn't invest anymore in printing more goods that I wasn't sure were going to sell. I've been having a massive sale on Etsy since then as I would love for my little greeting cards to not gather dust in the spare room! On top of that, Etsy has upped their charges (which means that I'm loosing a bigger chunk on my profit) and shipping from France is getting ridiculously expensive. I mean, people don't want to pay shipping costs that are actually more expensive than what they're buying right?!

So I decided to take a step back, have a real good think about what would make me really happy to create and how I could potentially sell it, and I came up with the conclusion that digital goods was the best idea. There's no need for shipping or paying for prints up front not knowing if it will have any success, and I get to create illustrations and graphics that other creatives will use, which is kind of cool! I'm still at early stages as I have just a couple of bundles available at the moment, but I'm planning on adding more bit by bit :)

So that's pretty much it guys! Things are going well and we're happy with where we are at the moment, but we keep in mind that there's always room for improvement ;)

I'm so grateful that I get to live from my passion and for Valentine's Day yesterday, I decided to give a big shout out to all my followers. I wanted to send my love to each and every one of you that have been sticking around, following my adventures, supporting me and my work, and motivating me in my every day life <3

I hope you've liked this little catch up, and make sure to follow me on Instagram if you'd like to see what I'm up to!

Tweet

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you all!

I'm officially out of office until the 6th of January from this afternoon and I couldn't be more excited about it :)

This year I'm spending my first Christmas in North Wales, staying with Jason's family. Although I lived in North Wales for 5 years, I would always come back to France during the holidays to spend some quality time with my family that I didn't see very often at the time.

So we decided to take two full weeks off and really enjoy it all. It's definitely going to be different from the Christmas I know, but I'm sure I'm going to love it anyway (as long as there's good food) ;)

I'm taking the opportunity of this last post for the year (!) to let you know that I won't be 'blogging' as much next year as I'm trying to shift things around and focus on what I really need: a new website.

I'm hoping to create a new website on Squarespace (with Jason's much needed help of course!), and am planning on having a blog and shop section on it.

I'm also thinking that if I make the move to Squarespace and have a new blog on the same platform, I'll probably think about changing the content of my blog posts and will focus more on design and behind the scenes. I'd love to share more about my day-to-day work, how I illustrate and create in general... Something more in line with where I want my business to go! I've already started to refine my logo so that it represents my current style better. Exciting :)

I very much hope that you're going to enjoy the end of the year with loved ones (with a thought for the dear friends and family members that are sadly not with us anymore) and that your new year will start amazingly!

Tweet

Portfolio Update - Christmas Tales from the Woodpecker Tree

With Christmas approaching very fast now, I thought that my last Portfolio Update of the year had to be this amazing festive book!

I loved working with Lesley on the first Tales from the Woodpecker Tree book so I was of course more than happy to work again with her on the Christmas one! First of all, her stories inspire me so much and I knew straight away how I would illustrate all seven of them. Her writing is so poetic that my imagination starts going crazy the moment I'm beginning to read her beautifully written tales. And I really think that's it's a great book for children of all ages, wether they're old enough to read them themselves or if they still need the help of a parent to read the stories, all comfy in bed on a cold Winter's night.

Have a look on my website to see a bit more about the book and get your copy in time for Christmas!

Tweet

Portfolio Update - Not Very Lady Like

Well, here's a project that I couldn't wait to share with you all! I've been working with Lauren for more than a year now and I'm so glad that our collaboration is still going strong.

When she contacted me, her Etsy shop Not Very Lady Like was just starting out and she had loads of ideas for new designs inspired by her feminist side and Harry Potter (although you'll also find some other themed designs too). Our process is very simple: She comes up with the ideas, I work my magic on the designs, and she then embroiders them beautifully on carefully sourced clothes.

Lauren is so talented and I can't wait to see what we come up with next!

See more of the designs I created on my website and shop these amazing embroidered items on Not Very Lady Like :)

Tweet